Week Three

The highlight of our third week here was a field trip to a Peace Corps site located about 90 miles from Santo Domingo. First off, the bus was air conditioned, an amazing luxury these days. This time of year here is similar to Houston summers, before electricity, with maybe a little less cooling at night. We traveled through a very lush country, with cane fields, rich grazing land and trees that seem to come from an earlier era.

The Peace Corps volunteer that we met is deeply engaged in a poor barrio in a small regional center. The pace was much slower than here in the capital. Although they seem to have more reliable electricity (we have regular blackouts, although we also have storage batteries and an "inversor" which keeps some things running) all other amenities were significantly less. It was inspiring to see the community library and other projects that they are building and to see how deeply connected he is to the local community. It was a little intimidating to see first-hand something that may be very similar to our living situation in Honduras. We will have a lot of adjustments to make -- like learning to collect and store water when it is only available for brief periods several times a week.

Our Spanish improves slowly. John had a dream in Spanish the other night, although with a bad accent and significant misuse of the subjunctive. We are almost getting accustomed to the complete failure of the "adopt a highway" program here and hardly notice the heavy exhaust from the nearby "autopista." Our host family continues to be extremely gracious.

Things seem to be heating up again in Honduras according to news reports, although they are still telling us that we are scheduled to go soon. All is well.